The Story That Won’t Go Away

The 1991 film about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is propaganda in more ways than one. First, let me start simply with how the DVD looks that came out in 2003. The case is colored red, white, and blue in the shape of a draped American flag. The red part of the flag on the cover looks like blood washed over the face of Kevin Costner’s character. This could indicate the character’s unintentional journey down the path of this twisted and mysterious story behind the assassination of President Kennedy. The discs themselves are red and blue as well with the same picture from the cover.

What is really important is the film itself and how it portrays the assassination of President Kennedy. I would relate the feeling in the film of the day of the Kennedy’s assassination to the day after this year’s (the 2016) presidential election. It was that sense of unimaginable horror and complete shock. That feeling produced by the film is an incredible reproduction of what it actually must have been like that day. The film plays into the shock of the events as they happened that day.

The film draws audience members into the story, but also the audience members who came for the stars. The film is chalk full of Hollywood actors who have done a lot of famous films or are famous for specific characters. The score for the film was done by John Williams, the writer of the score for Star Wars and many other accomplished films. All these people draw an audience regardless of what the movie is about.

Who the main character is and how he comes to believe that the Kennedy assassination is a conspiracy is really important to the film as propaganda as well. The main character is an investigator, a policeman, he has access to the case files and reports of the police investigations of Lee Harvey Oswald. He is, therefore, also able to discover the holes in the investigation and case files surrounding the incident as a whole. The point here, is the main character is an acceptable person to be investigating that some of the information is wrong or missing.

The way the film was received was also important to the argument that it is propaganda. The film was getting mixed reviews throughout it’s production, advertisement, and release. Oliver Stone, was prepared for the backlash though and simply made his movie to tell the story of Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) and his attempts to bring the story behind the assassination to light. In interviews Oliver Stone states that he made the film to open the minds of people young and old to examine the possibility of conspiracy revolving around the assassination of John F. Kennedy.